


what to do with the bones

by anth (antheeia)



Series: Pater Helmworth [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Eberron
Genre: Backstory, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Exposition, Gen, Horror, Khorvaire (Eberron), Khyber (Eberron), Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:00:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheeia/pseuds/anth
Summary: Curiosity killed the cat, but maybe the cat was lucky.(A piece of my Eberron PC's backstory.)
Series: Pater Helmworth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706899
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pater is my beloved Eberron OC. In our game, he's 49 and a chaotic evil warlock.  
> This is only a little piece of his backstory but it's a very relevant one. It's set when he was 26.

###  _Cragwar (Longway Tavern), 16 Nymm 976 YD, 10 pm_

Yelfis is a good guy.

Like most people I've met at Morgrave University, he's a bit stuck-up and kind of naive. Surprisingly, even though he's an ir'Morgrave and could be friends with literally anyone else — someone who's not late with their studies, for example, or someone who is an actual _scholar_ — the kid has taken a liking to me, specifically. Pater Helmworth, son of no one. I am only here because my adoptive father, who's on the city council, put in a good word for me. (A good word and probably a substantial tip, which is more effective than any word.) And Yelfis ir'Morgrave, whose father owns the goddamn University, decided to be my friend. I definitely can't say I'm unlucky, can I?

It’s undoubtedly luck that landed me in Yelfis’s graces and, therefore, made me part of the team for this excavation. They found buried ruins while digging a new tunnel in the Cragwar mines, and they can’t continue to dig without a team of experts to oversee the project. The Kundaraks and Canniths want this dealt with as soon as possible, so the tunnel can be opened and the workers can get back to mining mithril. _Of course_ . I’m sure, with the war going on and everything, that they would go bankrupt if this specific tunnel stayed closed longer than a month. A disaster we _absolutely_ have to prevent from happening.

Cragwar is truly a place forgotten by all the gods, except maybe a couple of the Dark Six. The lonely tavern here only has ale from Thrane, which tastes like sweat and rotten fruit (and maybe that’s why it manages to get here despite the war). When it comes to Thranish people, you could tell them it’s the wish of the Silver Flame and they’ll even straight-up drink piss, so I guess it’s only fair their alcohol tastes so bad.

I offered Yelfis my own drink, since it was so terrible, and he was absolutely delighted. Good for him. His cheeks were burning red for the rest of the evening, while he excitedly went on talking about what little we knew of the ruins.

I only half-listened to him while looking around in the mostly empty tavern. (It’s only fair that I show some interest. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him, after all.) He went on and on about the possibility that the ones we were about to study were ancient goblin ruins, dating back to more than three thousand years past. It was interesting at first, to imagine how much we could find out about the society they used to have, maybe before the final era of ruin that ended their domain over Khorvaire. While Yelfis talked I almost lost myself in the fantasy of how their architecture looked, with each room seeming as if it had climbed onto the building of its own volition. The enthusiasm died quickly, however: as soon as Yelfis started going all academic on me and he reminded me that he embodies everything I dislike about this field of studies. They all act as if history only belongs to an elite that can properly understand it and interpret it.

History belongs to no one.

Professor Liadon and Professor Fanner sit alone at a table, discussing between themselves, probably about this assignment. They’re the two experts who are actually requested here: Yelfis and me, we're here to learn. And I have no problem with learning — in fact, I love learning. The problem is what they’re going to teach us. 

Professor Liadon is an old elf who’s been teaching at Morgrave since it was founded. Before that, he was probably teaching somewhere else. He’s an insufferable theorist, and despite having lived such a long life, despite having experienced history firsthand, he has no empathy for the past. He loves it, undoubtedly, but he only loves it in the form of useless memorization of dusty books and repetition of someone else’s words and interpretations. I still have to pass his exam, Khorvarian protohistory. If Yelfis is right, and those that they found are goblin ruins, then he should be the perfect man for the job. _Should_.

But what will he do? Bring everything he can back to Sharn, close it in his dusty study with his dusty books and write yet another useless essay. If the members of the long-gone civilization that built and made the stuff could see all that, I’m sure they would destroy it with their own hands rather than leave it with that inadequate excuse for an archaeologist.

Professor Fanner, on the other hand, she’s one with a more modern approach. In her class, Methodology of Archeological Research, we did talk about the new schools of thought on accepted practices in the investigation of excavations. I believe she’s a brilliant woman and she’s wasting her time teaching spoiled rich kids who most likely aren’t even wired the right way to truly appreciate and respect the traces of history left behind.

Also, she may be a brilliant woman, but I don’t necessarily agree with her priorities. I mean, she likes Professor Liadon. She even just laughed at one of his terrible jokes. She’ll let him do whatever he wants. That’s because she’s a woman of studies, of theory. She doesn’t act. She just lays down the rules and waits for others to follow.

I’m different. If I make a rule it’s for myself to follow. I don’t care about everyone else.

In fact, as Yelfis appears to be about to fall asleep with his intoxicated face flat on the table, I think about how we’ll barely be allowed to see those ruins, much less study them. We’ll probably be the labourers who will sort and label what can be saved and that will be the end of our lesson. Then the machines will tear everything else down.

This is how history dies.

I can’t stand the idea. As long as I’m far away, and there’s nothing I can do, it’s easy to resign myself to it. But thinking that I came this close just to steal away pieces of some mysterious ruins and then allow these idiots to tear them down… it makes my blood boil.

Tomorrow morning at nine we’re supposed to start working.

I stare at Yelfis. He’s resting his face on the scratched surface of the wooden table, half-lidded eyes fixed on a point halfway between the freckles on his nose and the practically empty fourth glass of ale in his hand. A thought itches at the edge of my consciousness and I indulge in it. I let it in.

I take the empty glass from Yelfis’s hand and he shifts in place, his eyes finding their focus again. On my face. I lean towards him until I’m close enough to whisper faintly and be sure he’ll hear.

“Say, Fis, aren’t you curious?”


	2. Chapter 2

###  _ Cragwar (Groware Mines), 17 Nymm 976 YD, 2 am _

Yelfis is curious. And drunk.

Curious enough that I convinced him to sneak into the mines to get a taste of what we’ll work on tomorrow. And drunk enough to convince him to cast an invisibility spell on us, so that we — well,  _ he, mostly _ — could evade the mines’ surveillance.

His irregular steps echo on the moist floor of the dim-lit gallery. Damned two-hundred-gold-pieces-worth bespoke shoes, with their fucking leather soles and wooden heels. I wouldn’t need them to tell where he is, since he’s practically hanging from my side, and I’m sure we don’t need to showcase we’re inside for the guards’ benefit.

After a quick and silent consideration and Yelfis almost falling face-first into the mud, I decide that I can’t let him take another step or we’ll be found out, but I can’t go alone — if someone comes and Yelfis is there, he’ll make up some excuses, put up a nice face, and neither of us will face consequences, but if they find me alone the consequences would range from annoying to definitely-not-pretty, depending on who’s the lucky one who walks in on me.

So, I end up picking him up and carrying him in my arms. He looks kind of freaked out as he feels the floor missing under his feet, and then his large brown eyes get even larger and I know because  _ I’m seeing him again _ . Which means he lost concentration on his spell.

I sigh.

He seems to realize he fucked up, surely because he sees me, too, and he blushes and mutters something about how I surprised him. I do want to offer him a rebuttal, but the words get stuck in my throat as we enter the half-dug tunnel that broke into the ‘cave full of ancient ruins’, as they described it. I almost drop Yelfis to the floor, but he holds onto me and I catch myself at the last moment, luckily. I can only imagine the loud yell he would have given out. 

However, I’m not annoyed at him. I don’t even feel like I would care about him yelling, right now. It’s like I’ve suddenly been thrown into a whole different world, one where I might even sincerely like Yelfis.

First of all, the cave is not a  _ cave _ . It’s a room. One of those rooms the goblins of the Dhakaani Empire dug underneath the surface. There're green dragonshard torches lighting the area — clearly put there by the miners, but they used the old Dhakaani sconces to do that. It’s somehow a funny and alluring concept at the same time, these idiots using old ruins without even realising what they’re doing, and unconsciously living in a piece of history, exactly as if it was something from the present.

Secondly, the ruins — the room, the sconces, the mostly well-preserved metal objects, earthenwares, and the big stone structure in the middle — are obviously Dhakaani, and yet at the same time they are atypical. The daggers, with inlaid gems that shimmer darkly in the green light, have writings on them that look like ancient goblin script — I can’t decipher them, but maybe Yelfis can, if they’re not too worn. The earthenwares are typically goblin in shape and size — jugs and bowls are a bit smaller than what we’re used to, their shapes regular, with unblunted angles — but they have weird decorations: once again writings on them, and the depiction of what seems like a white floating river running through all of them. That’s a symbolism I don’t recall ever being observed in goblin art.

Dhakaani architecture is generally austere. Made of sober lines, imposing buildings and dark, sharp corners. After the Daelkyr War that was the beginning of the decline of their empire, their art changed. The architecture, specifically, turned more baroque. Like the four columns in the middle of the room, that look more like rock spirals — carved in such a way that they look like enormous roots, or thick tentacles, wrapping around themselves. At the center of them, there’s what looks like a well. I say it looks like a well because there’s a hole in the ground, but the structure surrounding it seems more like a gate to hell itself. The stone around it is carved like huge roots sprouting from the ground.

I realise I’ve put Yelfis down because he’s looking around on unsteady feet, and then he rushes towards the well, leaning inside it, his hand suddenly lit by magic. Maybe he’s found some writing on the inside and he’s trying to decipher it, because he stays bent over the edge of that well for long minutes. It looks uncomfortable, too, because the edge is irregular. Now that I look closer to the way it’s curved, it looks more like innumerable worm-like creatures crawling their way out — or in.

The mines are silent, so much that I can hear him murmuring. Or at least I think I do. The murmurs don’t get any clearer when I get closer.

My attention towards the objects around the room is short and fleeting — I know this is something Professor Liadon will want to bring back to Sharn and I will see them again, at length. But the columns, the well — this is my one chance to really appreciate them. To imagine how grand they must have looked to the Dhakaani.

Some modern historians have given more and more credibility to the idea that the fall of the Dhakaan Empire is to attribute to the goblins’ growing insanity. After all, their enemies invaded our plane from Xoriat, the Realm of Madness — and although little is known about the Daelkyr, and about Xoriat, we do know insanity closely follows them, surrounds them. It’s likely that, even if you’re their enemy, you’re going to be influenced.

This whole room smells like insanity, and this quiet whispering is getting to my nerves. 

Yelfis, still bent over the edge of the well, whispering to himself like that, seems a bit insane, too. But then again, he often does when he indulges in the studies he likes.

“Is everything alright, Fis?” I ask, because it seems the right compromise between my curiosity, my annoyance, my frustration at having to share this experience with him and the necessity to keep his friendship. I brush my hand on the nearest column and run my fingers along the awesomely detailed carving. The thing depicted curling on itself is beautifully smooth, and its diameter grows smaller toward the top. It’s wrapping around something that is divided in many small sections, each one hand’s width.

“I think I found something, Pate...” he finally says, distracting me from the column's weird shape. I’m tempted to say,  _ yes, I could have guessed that _ . 

“What is it?” I say instead.

“There's something at the bottom of this hole!”

Yelfis sounds like he’s forcing the words out, as if it’s hard to breathe. I make the last two steps to look down in the hole, and for a moment I feel like I should expect to see something absolutely horrible.

In front of my mind’s eyes flashes an image of Yelfis’s body twisting on itself in a completely unnatural way, his chest where his back should be, an insane smile on his face and his eyes, irises disappeared in the black of overblown pupils, wide and bloodshot. Behind him, the depth of the well is filled with vibrant red liquid — blood. 

But Yelfis is fine, slightly turning his head to look up at me, and at the bottom of the well the room simply continues, dug into rock — there’s another area that looks quite large (maybe as large as the room we’re in?) and there are some small objects, like medallions and small figures carved in stone. As I wonder if they’re as atypical as the rest of the things up here, I realise I can still hear the whisper — but Yelfis’s lips are closed shut.

It doesn’t exactly alarm me. It’s just strange, I was sure it was a whisper and now it seems more like a buzzing background sound, like that of machinery.

“That looks interesting,” I comment, pointing at the stone figures. “Shall we go down?” I smile at Yelfis and he smiles his white smile back at me. He probably hasn’t noticed the buzzing, or whispering, or whatever it is, so I don’t tell him. He’s exactly where I want him, filled with enthusiasm and recklessness. I don’t want to tip the balance in any direction.

Besides, the sound is probably from one of the tools they use here in the mines. I shake the thought away as we descend into the well.


	3. Chapter 3

###  _???, 17 Nymm 976 YD?, ??? _

I’m not sure where we are.

We did descend to the bottom of the well, of that I’m sure. The room was even weirder than the one upstairs. It was held up by arches that looked like insanely long and contorted spinal columns, whose ribs extended across the whole ceiling. At the center of the wall, right in front of us, a giant face was carved, and the fact that it looked human wasn’t even the strangest thing.

The face emerged from the wall, in the center of a sea of what looked like cables of different shapes and sizes, all converging on it like a halo, but half-hidden by other shapeless  _ things _ . It was all fake, however, all carved in stone. The face’s lips and eyes were open and from them poured a white cascade — it looked like flowing water but it must have been masterfully carved marble. The cascade melded into the floor, in a pool of alabaster.

I stared at all that for a few moments, because it all looked so real — almost breathing, the cables whirring slowly with magic power, and whatever was covering them throbbing like it was flesh, malformed but alive and suffering. I almost felt like it should have been dripping with blood. A shiver ran down my spine.

I had never seen anything so beautiful.

Everything else didn’t exist, and when I moved one step in the direction of the face, I was barely aware of Yelfis’s quickened breath by my side.

Then the face’s mouth opened wider and the pool on the ground was like a mirror, and inside it was the face, upside down, reduced to a skull, white flowing from mouth into parted jaws, and the white tears were its eyes, dangling from the face’s eye sockets. The eyes rolled on themselves until they were looking at me, suspended in the mirror, in front of the skull. And then the mouth screamed.

I put my hands on my ears, pushed with all my might, squeezed my eyes until I saw red, and something like pain was shooting through all my nerves.

Then it stopped.

My muscles relaxed. My arms fell down my sides. I opened my eyes and I wasn’t in that room anymore: I was somewhere else.

I turn to my left and Yelfis’s pale, terrified face communicates very clearly that he doesn’t know what the hell happened, either. Around us there’s a huge hall whose walls, red like bloody flesh, swell and then shrink like lungs, and a wheezing sound is coming from everywhere and nowhere. It sounds like a person suffering through their last breath, only it goes on and on and on. The hall is flesh, but with bloody bones supporting it like pillars, and metal cables entangled in it like veins.

I’m not sure what face I’m making, but Yelfis returns my gaze and he’s even more terrified, steps back once, twice, falls down onto the floor screaming and tears blossom from his eyes. I raise one hand to my mouth, to touch my lips, and I realise I’m smiling.

It might be because he’s almost pretty, terrified like that.

I hear a sound, like laughter, and when I turn there’s nothing. Not even the giant face that brought us here in the first place — just halls and halls of metal and flesh, and arches that open onto breathing corridors, dark like the insides of a person might look. My single step towards one of them echoes in the hall around us. I feel something crawling under my skin.

Yelfis starts screaming again.

I turn towards him, all set on telling him that screaming won’t do much for us, to shut up and get moving. But the words stay behind my gritted teeth as I see flesh tentacles spouting from the floor — no, the floor under our feet morphing into them and wrapping all around Yelfis’s body.

They’re slimy and red and look like muscles bared of skin and they grab each one of Yelfis’s limbs and close around them firmly until they’re keeping him in mid-air and I’m not sure if he’s screaming in fear or pain. His confused whimpers are probably words, I hear my name mixed into them now and again, but I’m not listening. A couple of tentacles rope around my ankles and my whole body tenses.

“I can’t exactly help you here, Fis,” I mutter, reaching for the weapon at my waist.

“This isn’t funny, Pater!” he cries, and I know now he’s done for. He won’t help me, he’s too scared, so this means I have to get out of this situation on my own, and possibly get him out, too, or I’ll never be able to show my face in the University again.  _ Great _ . Exactly what I was planning to do on this fine night, am I right?

I try to chop off the tentacles keeping me stuck in place without chopping off my feet, and I feel one slimy appendage clambering up my back, under my clothes, but it almost feels like it’s under my skin itself. It brushes against my cheek and I try to tear it away but the extremity wraps around my wrist so tightly that it makes my other hand release its grasp on the handaxe to do something about it. I hiss in pain, and I’m biting the inside of my cheeks so strongly it’s like I’m chewing them. They’re bleeding, and I taste blood.

Then a second tentacle is next to my ear, and inside it before I can even try and do something. It’s cold and slick and it makes my whole body shiver and shudder.

“You’re having fun,” says a voice. It’s mellow and soft, androgynous, and the words sting somewhere deep inside me. I’m not having fun, being restrained and probably eventually killed by tentacles in someplace that looks like my worst nightmares and my best dreams at the same time. I think that, and yet the thought feels partly alien, like it’s not completely true.

I turn to look at Yelfis, or maybe the tentacle in my ear turns me. “You’re having fun watching him,” it says again, and I’m probably the only one hearing the voice, or Yelfis is too far gone to pay it any heed. He’s writhing and squirming — his eyes are brimming with tears, a sea of them, they’re red and swollen and his face is just as flushed, his black hair drenched with sweat and sticking to the sides of his face. He’s crying out with all the air in his lungs, he’s calling my name again and again and again in a way that makes something inside me swell.

I wouldn’t call this  _ fun _ . I can just appreciate how pretty he is, even if this situation is bad. If we both die, at least I’ve enjoyed what I could. Like his voice screaming my name like that.

“You find it  _ pleasant _ ,” observes the voice again, and maybe I’m going mad, or maybe there’s a note of amusement in it. I’m probably imagining everything. Maybe I’m hallucinating.

“I can do mind tricks,” says the voice, conversing with my thoughts like it’s normal. My eyes are still stuck to Yelfis’s squirming body, and I can see a tentacle wrapping around his throat. “But this is not an illusion,” the voice adds. Yelfis shuts his eyes, protests some more, then his movements get weaker, slower. I feel myself breathing harder, and I can’t do anything but watch. Something inside me says I wouldn’t do anything even if I could.

The tentacle loosens up, and Yelfis inhales sharply and coughs, convulsing as much as the tentacles will allow him. His face is drenched with spit and sweat and tears and he shivers violently. “Pater,” he whispers, half-lidded eyes staring right at me (and, after all, I’m the only one there). “I beg you… make it stop.”

“I can’t- I can’t do that.” I say, matter-of-factly, but I gulp halfway through and it makes me stutter and sound sorry. I am sorry that I’ll probably die but I don’t care about Yelfis, at this point. I only care about him in the measure in which he can make my passing less unpleasant.

“I don’t want to die…” he whimpers, and then he starts bawling his eyes out like a child. As if anyone ever wants to die.

“We can make him shut up,” says the voice. “But you seem to like to hear him cry, don’t you?”

I don’t answer, because my attention is all focused on Yelfis, who seemed to have gone limp in between his sobs, until now. His voice grows loud again, and an acute shriek precedes his attempts at curling on himself, pulling on his restraints so strongly that they actually give in a bit. There’s something under his clothes, a bulge in the middle of his torso, like something pushing to get out. Yelfis lowers his head, stares at it, and he stutters, terrified, and whimpers, and then he looks at me.

I don’t know what he sees on my face, I barely look at his expression, because his shirt blossoms with blood and then something tears it in two and comes out and it’s white and hard like bones, and it comes from inside his body. Two of them, looking like broken ribs that were just split open. Yelfis’s voice reaches a new, higher pitch, and he screams meaningless sounds. Then the bones grow longer and longer until they look like the legs of a giant insect.

They fold on themselves and tear into his stomach and I see him rolling his eyes in the back of his head, and he falls forward, his hair covering his face. I think he fainted, but I can still hear moans and groans, although they’re weak and broken, while his two new appendages tear the soft flesh of his own abdomen, open it some more, letting blood and insides out. His intestines dangle from him, almost touching the ground.

Then everything stops. Even Yelfis’s constant sounds are cut, for a brief moment, before he starts muttering my name, repeating it until it’s just letters, a meaningless sound like water dripping from a broken faucet. Like his blood forming a pool of crimson widening under him, that slowly creeps towards me. I look down and I realise I’m hard, and I’m sweating so much my clothes are glued to my body.

“See, you like that a lot,” says the voice. “Interesting.”

I don’t know if it’s true but it seems to be, because my erection, my heavy breathing and the way I look at Yelfis, enraptured, not even mildly disgusted, seem to confirm it. I think I want to put my hands in the hole in his abdomen and see how many organs I can rip out before Yelfis’s life goes out.

“Oh, it’s not about taking, Pater,” the voice says. “It’s about transforming.”

There’s another whimper coming from Yelfis, and his arms start bending in all the wrong ways. He throws his head back, and I hear his bones crack, the ones in his shoulders, in his arms, in his fingers. He bends his elbows at an angle that should be impossible, crooks his fingers backwards until their deformed shapes are touching the back of his hand.

He straightens his head again, and it falls on one side. He looks at me with expressionless, wet eyes, with his lips ajar. He’s drooling, and he blinks slowly.

“Will you love me if I’m like this, Pater?”

For a moment, I feel a pinch of pity. The poor guy is a lost case, really. Then I hear that voice in my ears, whispering soothingly. “Tell him,” it says, “tell him how much you like him.”

I think you should do what the voice in your head says, especially when it probably belongs to the tentacle that could crush your bones at any given moment. But I also feel that I do want to tell Yelfis that. He deserves to be praised for his courage. He deserves to know his suffering is a pretty one.

“I like you better now,” I say. His face goes soft, and his mouth opens in a smile that has too many teeth. His bones crack again and his arms twist on themselves as they extend, bones getting longer, stretching the muscles over them until they rip. He lets out a bleat, high pitched and barely human, and he falls forward, hanging lower. The tentacles wrap the whole length of his upper limbs, the flesh and bare bones, down to his shoulders.

“I love you, Pater,” he whispers, then he laughs, at the phrase, or maybe at himself. It makes me nauseous how pathetic he is.

I want to answer, but it’s not what he’s hoping for. My pity lasted barely longer than its pinch in my insides, and now my voice trembles with something akin to anger, because I feel like I want to pull each of his teeth out, one by one. “I’d like you even better if you shut up,” I say.

I have wanted to say this for  _ so long _ .

His eyes go wide and one of the insect limbs dangling under him moves again. The sharp bone draws its tip through Yelfis’s cheek, pierces his tongue through and then exits the cheek on the other side. His mouth is stuck open now, his tongue sticking out, dripping blood and saliva in the pool under him.

“Ihst… thaht… ohay?” Yelfis asks. For some reason, that makes me laugh.

“He can do better,” says the voice in my head, and as if in response, the bony limb moves again. It moves towards me, pulling Yelfis’s tongue along. It tears both his cheeks open, rips his tongue out in between his screams of pain and then offers it to me. The tentacles holding my hands even let them free, allow me to take it.

I look between the ripped organ and Yelfis, and he gives me a tired smile. Then the tentacles let both of us go, and he falls to the ground, face-first in the pool of his own blood.

I glance in his direction, and the first clear thought in my head is that I should run. I should leave, save my hide while I still can. But my feet won’t move, and the next thought is  _ run where? _ There’s no way out of this flesh room, the well from which we came is nowhere to be seen, and so is the room we were in before. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know that I can run.

“You are under that room, and at the same time, you aren’t. You could say you’re in hell,” the voice offers, and it sounds almost sweet. Like it takes pity on me.

I look around, but I still see no one. Then my eyes fall on Yelfis’s body, and I see he’s moving still. He breathes heavily and lets out a wordless wheeze. He smiles with his bloody mouth and all his extra teeth, but it’s just as weak as his hand that brushes against my cheek. His fingers are too many, clumped together and deformed, each one a different length. One of them, the longest one, is bent at a weird angle, and has a twin sprouting from its side, in the middle of its length. Those two fingertips trace my cheekbone. He mouths something I don’t understand, then his arm falls back down. He looks weak, he should be dead, and yet he breathes in the same agonizing way as the room we’re in.

I need to leave, now.

I hear steps echoing on the floor, the dull sound of metal, and the squishing of flesh. I can barely raise my head to look. I have to force my body, and I feel the bones in my neck crack slightly as I lift my chin. 

“You can’t run, Pater,” the voice says, and I know now, even if I can’t tell if the figure’s lips have moved, that voice belongs to it.

What is walking towards me looks remarkably human, and at the same time, remarkably not. Its slender, short body is wrapped in clothes seemingly made of interwoven black leather that cover its body like a second skin, leaving out pale hands, heels and toes, and probably its face (if only I could look up to see it — but my head won’t move more than this unless I break my own neck). Ink-black hair falls down its back to its hips. Around it, leather pieces slither like tentacles.

It walks slowly until it reaches Yelfis, who’s still wheezing on the ground, looking at me with his empty, insane eyes. He laughs when the figure’s feet are right next to him, and he almost sounds happy. 

The leather straps reach for Yelfis and sit him up. The figure’s small hand — it’s feminine and white, with short round nails sitting on its fingers — pats Yelfis’s head like he’s a dog, and he doubles over himself, deformed hands trying to hold his head in them. He retches, terribly, so much that the sound itself and the image are getting to me, making my insides clench. What’s left of his face, bloodied and mauled, swells, his eyes bulging out, his whole body shaking. Then he starts vomiting.

There’s teeth, pieces of bones, blood, flesh, and an acidic stench of death. It all pours out of him and on the floor, among his own ripped out intestines. I feel nauseous but I can’t puke and I want to run but I can’t move.

When it seems over, and Yelfis’s body stops shuddering, the figure kneels. I can only see its back, the long, straight hair falling down its shoulder almost brushing the bloody floor. Yelfis looks up at the figure and his mouth opens in another smile. Something dark pink peeks from that smile — like a tongue, but not a human one. Yelfis sticks his newfound tongue out like he’s hoping to receive something, and a laugh fills the air, light and delicate. It’s not coming from his lips, and neither from mine.

Then, Yelfis’s eyes are bulging out again, and  _ something _ — thick, fleshy and long — is leaving his lips, coming out from inside his body: his tongue. He retches, again, like he wants to vomit, but only that thing comes out, and I realise it looks like one of the tentacles that was holding us down. Yelfis’s eyes pop out of his skull, his jaw dislocates, and more and more tentacles exit his body — his face, his mouth, his nostrils and his now empty orbits. It’s like he’s drying from the inside out, and when the creature that came out of him slithers away, merges with the floor, what’s left of Yelfis is a lifeless husk: his shapeless skin, his withered bones, the eyeballs, his wretched insides on the floor, and what he vomited.

The leather straps from before hold Yelfis’s head straight and the figure, still kneeling in front of him, leans forward and leaves a kiss on those empty eye sockets. Or at least it looks like a kiss, until I see it’s sucking pale matter from inside Yelfis’s skull — eating his brain.

I find myself taking a deep breath, looking down and away, and I see my hands shaking. I can’t help asking myself if that is going to happen to me, too.

The figure stands again, and this time, its attention is on me, like it has heard the question that I never uttered. Its hand caresses my ear, and I feel something wet and slimy inside it. A shiver runs down my back. It should be fear, but it’s pleasant, like a soothing caress. Like a seductive murmur.

“Yes and no,” it says, and I see the hand retreating, holding something that looks red and slimy. I find that my head can move, now, and I look up to finally take in its face.

The figure is… unbelievably beautiful. It has skin so fair I feel like I should be able to count the capillaries underneath, and large, dark doe eyes, lips thin and red with dripping blood, curved in a smile, and a small, pointed nose. The face is covered in scars, like someone cut the skin and then stitched it back together, and then did the whole thing again and again.

“You will  _ evolve _ , one day. You’ll become one of my dear creations,” the voice says. The figure’s lips are still closed but I know it’s its-  _ his _ voice. That same mellow voice that has been whispering in my ears since earlier.

He is holding something. The thing he seems to have removed from my ear, and it looks like a worm of some sort, wriggling in his palm. He looks at me, then smiles. His teeth are white and sharp. He puts his lips around the worm and sucks it inside his mouth, maintaining eye contact the whole time.

He takes his time, then swallows with a satisfied smile.

“You taste  _ interesting _ , Pater. I want to keep you a bit more.”

My knees are shaking. I put all my strength into them but I can’t stand. “Keep me?” I utter, and even my words are shaking. The being in front of me looks like an amused boy, young, alluring and terrifying.

“I already put the seed of what you’ll become inside your brain,” he says, with no movements of his lips, leaning forward. His hand — cold but delicate — takes my chin and lifts it up, to make sure my eyes won’t escape his. I wouldn’t dare. “Admittedly,” he adds, “I didn’t have to do much.”

His hand leaves my face, but I keep my head up. I breathe heavily, and I feel like my body weighs too much for me to support it, even if I’m on my hands and knees. I watch him rest his chin on his hand while the leather tentacles slither towards the vomited mess next to Yelfis’ body. The blood and bile slide along the surface of the tentacles, leaving them clean when they emerge with something.

The things bring what they found back into the figure’s hand. It’s something bloody, white and small like a tooth. The figure holds it in the middle of his palm, as if to show me. It looks like a small pyramid carved out of a bone fragment, and the brush of the figure’s fingers magically etches something in each of its faces. They’re symbols, or maybe letters I don’t understand, shining in a dark, purple light.

The figure holds it in front of my face.

“Take it,” he says, and I do. I reach for it, trying to still my hand — but the mere thought of touching that being sends shivers down my back. Somehow I know it’s not allowed, and yet I want to, desperately.

He lets the dice fall in my hand. It should be light, but it feels unsettlingly heavy. I close my fingers around it and I can feel it pulsating, like an organ of some sort.

“You are kneeling before Dyrnn,” the voice resonates in my mind, “as you should.” I feel like I already knew his name, but at the same time it’s an alien name that my tongue doesn’t dare pronounce and my brain didn’t dare think and still doesn’t now. He circles around me, and I’m tempted to follow him with my gaze. I am tempted, and I feel like my body would respond. But the jolt of fear running down my back stops me.

Instead, I lower my eyes on my hand. He is standing behind me: I am aware of his presence like I am of the position of my own limbs, and at the same time like I would be of the edge of a knife pressed against my throat. “I look forward to our collaboration,” the voice adds inside my head and I feel a sense of dread and euphoria devouring me.

My hand looks like it’s swelling. I feel it itching, pulsating along with the die I keep in my fist. It’s something I notice with a growing sense of distress, and when I try to open my fist, it’s hard to move my fingers. I breathe in air, almost say something about it, but my inhale is cut short by the piercing pain shooting through my hand, from my fingers to my wrist, and I see white, shut my eyes against the tears prickling at their edges.

Pain shocks my whole arm and then my whole body but it’s all concentrated in the small bones of my fingers. They crack as if my own flesh is crushing them into small little pieces. I hear screaming and of course it’s my own, but the voice sounds different and far away, and desperate and miserable, and it doesn’t match that euphoria running somewhere in the back of my mind. 

It hurts, hurts more than I ever imagined something could, and I can’t take my eyes off the way my fingers twist and bend and flesh and bone grows out of place. Through the tears and my half-lidded lips I see my own hand mutating around the dice. I want to drop it, but I can’t bring myself to.

I am paralyzed, the pain assaults my nerves and the fear makes my every sense flare up, which just makes it hurt more. I double over until my forehead is practically touching the ground. I grip my wrist and the more the pain, the tighter I hold it. The burn is almost bearable, like it’s the one thing keeping me grounded.  _ Awake _ . Like I would faint if I let go — or worse, like I wouldn’t.

“You want it to stop?” says the voice in my head. “But isn’t it exciting?”

The pain pulsates in my hand for so long I lose the concept of time — my hand still shifts and changes, until the pain of its corruption becomes a dull thing in the back of my head. It hurts, but it also feels like a strange sort of caress, like the words of a doting mother.

“See, Pater,” says the voice, the being whose presence had slipped to the back of my thoughts in the face of the terrible pain. “You have to know the suffering you want to inflict. That way, when you hurt someone, you enjoy it better.”

Something brushes against my cheek. It shoots adrenaline through my veins, so powerfully I feel like my heart will explode soon and I’ll die, and maybe it would be merciful. But I don’t want to die. No matter what, I don’t want to die.

“You won’t die,” says the voice, soothingly. I see his hand closing on my own, brushing against each of my malformed, monstrous fingers, all seven of them. As he does, they each painfully go back to normal, or disappear, eaten by my own flesh — in the blink of an eye, it all ends.

I am left with my heavy breath and the ghost of that experience leaves my fingers numb. There’s a purple circle my own grip drew around my wrist, but everything else is as it was before. Disappeared without a trace.

The back of my throat is dry and bitter like bile, like I’m about to throw up, but I keep it down. I’m alive, I think. I feel alive, my heart beats, my lungs take in air like it’s the first time and it feels good to have survived. The euphoria from before takes over and spills out, in the form of a laugh. I laugh, and laugh, not because something is funny but because I’m alive, I lived through all of that, and now it feels possible to live through anything.

“You will learn, and when you’re ready, you’ll live as one of my own,” the voice says, inside my mind. He’s been staring at me the whole time, his lips still bloody, and his teeth as well. He shows them when he smiles at me with that creepy smile, that has no happiness within, and then he reaches for me.

I am not scared, this time. I am frozen in place, but I am calm, and when his cold fingertip brushes against my forehead and I feel my strength seeping out of me, I know it’s not the end.

I know I have something to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> My beta El is the MVP and I love her.


End file.
